Bøker av Ben Burt

This portrait of Santa Isabel in over 600 pictures shows an island transformed by its colonial history yet maintaining a confident and distinctive identity within Solomon Islands and the Pacific Island region.Santa Isabel is one of the largest islands that make up the island nation of Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific. Politically it is now one of nine provinces, each with its own variation of a shared history. In a country divided among many Christian denominations, Isabel is distinctive for its early acceptance of the Anglican Church, which united most of the island and its six language groups by the 1920s and then shaped its history up to the present.This book traces Santa Isabel history through a selection of the many hundreds of pictures of the island made first by Europeans and increasingly by its own people. These begin with the drawings and paintings of voyagers from the late 18th century, gradually succeeded by photos from the 1860s onwards showing the arrival of missionaries, traders and warships. From the 1900s there are photos made by the Europeans who established plantations on Isabel and colonial officers asserting British colonial authority. However, the pictorial record is dominated by photos from the Anglican Melanesian Mission. The Second World War, portrayed mainly by military photos, was followed closely by economic and political developments leading up to Solomon Islands independence in 1978 - developments portrayed in both church and government photos. Photos of more recent social, ceremonial and political activities show the unique combination of church, chiefs and local government in Isabel life. A renewed interest in local culture in the 21st century is revealed through photos of festivals and cultural research by both visiting and local researchers as Isabel people explore the possibilities of tourism, resource extraction and environmental conservation.

Burt studies the effects of the 19th century labour trade, colonial subjugation and the subsequent Christian conversion. He examines the anti-colonial Maasina Rule movement of the 1940s and finally illustrates the subsequent efforts of Kwara'ae leaders to regain their self-determination and to reaffirm the values of "tradition" under Christianity.The Kwara'ae example of colonialism and Christianity is part of the broader experience of Melanesia and of other peoples in the Third World who once lived a tribal life. The detailed local focus, based on a year of fieldwork, provides valuable evidence essential to a wider comparative analysis of colonial history and the continuing development of indigenous Christianity from an anthropological and a historical perspective. Tradition and Christianity explores how and why a Pacific Islands people, fiercely attached to the tradition of their ancestors, have transformed their society by changing their religion.

In this autobiographical account of life in the capital of the Solomon Islands, Michael Kwa'ioloa reflects on the challenges of raising a family in town and sustaining ties with a distant rural homeland on Malaita island. Continuing the long tradition of Kwara'ae community leaders participating in political activism, he discusses how the roles of these leaders were severely tested by the violent conflict between Malaitans and the indigenous Guadalcanal people at the turn of the century. Kwa'ioloa provides a local perspective on the causes and course of this unhappy episode in his country's history and describes a need for a way of life founded upon ancestral values, giving chiefs a role in the governance of Solomon Islands.

Based on an excellent range of case studies and supported throughout by useful learning features, World Art explores the concept of 'art' as understood by cultures across the globe. This invaluable textbook is essential reading for all anthropology of art students, as well as students of museum studies and art history.